Not really the sort of image I would associate with “The Playboy Book of Science Fiction and Fantasy.” I would expect something more … playful, I guess. Not the vicious glare of a hellspawned paper Playboy cartoon set on fire.

I’m not surprised. Their “horror and the supernatural’ story collection has a cover image of what I had assumed were either mummified corpses, really ugly-ass zombies, or late-stage anorexia, and comes across as equally mystifying in its (assumed) relevance to the content.

@ GSS admin: do I have any better suggestions? Not really. Anything that doesn’t obstruct our view of the covers is likely to be easy to remove, and anything that is hard to get rid of is likely to get in the way of the covers, which are what we all come here for. Bummer, eh?

And while I have your attention, is there any chance of adding a “random cover” button to the site? That would definitely make the national time-wasting index rise.

I vividly remember this from my parents’ bookcase when I was quite young (<7), together with a cover from some murder mystery depicting the well-manicured hand of a buried woman reaching out from the dirt…